The Photoshop Lightroom 5 from Adobe is a complete photo management and editing suite for Mac OS X and Windows. Ideal for enthusiasts and professionals alike, Lightroom takes a nondestructive approach to photo editing, leaving the original files uncompromised. All your adjustments and edits are stored in a database and applied to an image on the fly, so that you'll always be able to go back to the original image. This enables you to execute as many post-processing adjustments on a photo as you'd like, without making permanent changes to the original image.

Lightroom also serves as a powerful organizational tool for your photographs. Organize photos to suit your needs via an intuitive folder-based data structure. Lightroom lets you store images on multiple storage devices, and it stores low-resolution previews of each image in its central database, allowing you to browse photos even when the original files are offline. You'll be able to search your images based on any number of criteria, accelerating the process of locating a specific image.

Lightroom's interface is divided into five major components: Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web. Each screen serves its own purpose, and you can go back and forth between them easily. There is some overlap in functionality, but for the most part, the components are compartmentalized.

The Library screen is where you organize and browse your photos. Enjoy full access to all folders in your library from this screen, allowing you to reorganize as needed. Apply keywords, ratings, color labels, and metadata additions to images. You can make custom searches to create "Collections" based on any of these criteria. The "Smart Collections" function updates on the fly as additional images meet your criteria. For example, you can have an up-to-date collection of all images that you've given a 5-star rating. There is also a "Quick Develop" panel allowing you to make minor adjustments to an image, without having to venture into the Develop screen.

The Library also serves as the gateway to import and export images. When you click "Import," the Import window expands to fill your entire display. Browse through your hard drive or a memory card to find images for import. You can leave the images in their original location, copy or move to a different folder, or copy and convert them to Adobe's DNG format. Apply Develop settings, add metadata, and add keywords during import, such as one for the camera used to capture the photos. Rename files and save a second copy to a backup drive during import.

When you've finished editing, use the Library screen to export your photos with ease. You can use the "Export" function, which brings up a window with numerous settings -- including image size, sharpening, file format, and the like -- that you can customize. There is a "Publish Services" section, enabling you to send images to your hard drive or Flickr with ease. Create as many presets for Publish Services as you'd like, giving you one-click access to frequently used export operations. This section can be further expanded via third-party plug-ins, available from Adobe's Lightroom Exchange website.

The second major component of Lightroom is the Develop screen. This is where you'll do the vast majority of your photo editing and toning. Perform any adjustment imaginable here, including color temperature, exposure, black levels, contrast, sharpness, and brightness, to name just a few. You can make adjustments via sliders or tone curves, discretely modify color channels, and convert images to black and white. Numerous presets are available, allowing you to quickly apply a certain "look" to a photo, and you can create your own presets based on your favorite settings.

The Develop screen also features useful History and Snapshot functions. History lets you browse through all of the adjustments you've made to an image, in the order that they were made, so that you can revert back to any stage in the image process. At any time, create a Snapshot of an image, which saves all of the settings you've applied, allowing you to continue to experiment with a photo after you've found a look you like.

Remove dust spots and red eye from photos, thanks to Lightroom's spot editing tools. Create image masks to apply graduated filter adjustments to a photo, or use the brush tool to dodge, burn, and make other spot adjustments. You can add vignettes and simulated film grain to images, great for breathing analog life into digital photos.

With distortion correction, "defishing" of images captured via fisheye lenses can be done from within the program. Correct for both fisheye and rectilinear distortion, a capability highly useful for those shooting with extreme wide angle lenses. Numerous lens profiles are included with the software, and you can save your own presets for oft-used lenses.

Lens corrections can also eliminate the keystone effect that ensues when your camera is not straight-on a subject. Basic crop and rotation tools are also available for quick and easy adjustments. If there is anything that can't be handled by Lightroom, it's easy to export a photo to Photoshop for more thorough editing; and any changes you make to an image in Photoshop will be automatically reflected in Lightroom.

Lightroom's other three screens are all about sharing your images. The Slideshow screen gives you all the tools necessary to create digital slideshows of your images, complete with transitions and music. View these from within Lightroom or export them to a PDF or video file to share.

The Print screen allows you to print your images in any way imaginable. Adjustable for many standard paper sizes, it lets you visually lay out photos on them, allowing you to maximize the number of photos on a single page -- thus helping to reduce printing costs. Lightroom can automatically position photos so that space on a page will be used as efficiently as possible. Adjust prints for different paper types and color profiles, and add a signature plate if you wish.

The Web screen gives you numerous means of outputting photos to the web. Adobe includes a number of HTML and Flash galleries, allowing you to create a web gallery without any knowledge of programming. These can be customized to suit your needs, and third-party galleries are available via the Adobe Lightroom Exchange website.

Top new features in Lightroom 5 include Smart Previews, improved photo book creation, video slide shows, an Advanced Healing Brush for quickly making images spotless, an Upright tool for easily straightening images, and a Radial Gradient tool for emphasizing important parts of images.

Lightroom is sold as multiplatform software, which means it can be installed on either Mac or Windows operating systems. This is the English language version of the software.

What is Lightroom?

Create Brilliant Images

Above all, it's your images that matter. Make them as great as you imagined they could be using the leading-edge image processing tools in Lightroom. From sophisticated exposure and color controls to superior noise reduction and sharpening, Lightroom provides what you need to create stunning photographs

State-of-the-Art Editing Tools

Create the perfect look for every image, whether you shoot RAW or JPEG. Designed by the makers of Adobe Photoshop software in partnership with top photographers around the world, Lightroom includes a comprehensive range of leading-edge image processing tools. Make precise overall adjustments to color and contrast or use a flexible brush that lets you edit in targeted areas of your photo for just the look you want. Dodge and burn, convert to black-and-white, add grain, reduce noise, adjust sharpness, and much more

Develop Presets

Save your favorite looks and apply them instantly. Handy presets -- many are included, or you can create and save your own -- enable you to apply a series of favorite adjustments in a single click

Nondestructive Editing

Experiment fearlessly with as many image-editing controls, enhancements, and looks as you like. Lightroom is a nondestructive environment that encourages your creative exploration. Your original images are safely unaltered, and it's easy to reverse your steps or save multiple versions of any photograph

Adobe Photoshop Integration

Select multiple photos in Lightroom and automatically open them in Photoshop to merge them into a panorama, a high dynamic range (HDR) photo, or a creative composite. See your edits immediately back in Lightroom

Streamline Your Digital Photography

In every way, Lightroom boosts your creativity and saves you time and effort. Built to be fast, intuitive, and a pleasure to use, it's the efficient assistant you need -- one set of powerful tools for your digital photography tasks, whether you're adjusting one image, searching for ten, processing hundreds, or organizing thousands

Your Photography Essentials in One Package

Quickly achieve the best from your photography with proven, refined software that provides efficient tools for your entire photography workflow. You can edit, manage, and showcase all your images with one integrated solution

Intuitive Environment

Be productive and efficient, and enjoy the freedom and creativity that comes from working within an intuitive environment perfectly designed for the job. The controls of Lightroom are easy to master and let you breeze through your photography tasks quickly and smoothly

Highly Tuned Performance and Design

Quickly edit one photograph or work efficiently with libraries of up to hundreds of thousands of images. The import interface is easy to set up and navigate, with clear visual indications of where your photos will be located and how they'll be organized. Save time when processing images by applying the same Develop settings to all photos in a group at once using presets or the sync feature. For example, correct the exposure from an entire shoot or convert all of the images to black-and-white

Efficient Image Viewing and Selecting

See, evaluate, and select your images quickly and clearly with flexible image viewing features. Instantly magnify one image or compare several. Even hide the background and application interface so that you can focus on what matters most -- your images

Image Management

Get organized and find images quickly with powerful asset management features. Easily group photos into collections, quickly assign searchable ratings and keywords to one image or hundreds, manage your library across multiple drives, and sort or search for photos using many different criteria

The Lightroom Community

Trade tips, experience, Develop presets, and more with a thriving worldwide community of Lightroom users and photographers just like you in many venues online and offline

Make an Impact

You shot your images because they had meaning, whether to you, your client, or your subject. Use Lightroom to communicate that meaning with style and impact. Create customized print packages, dynamic slide show videos with music, and elegant web galleries. And showcase your images online using streamlined integration with photo-sharing sites

Customized Print Layouts

Easily showcase your photos at their best with a top-quality printing engine and customized print layouts that let you print several copies of one or multiple images on a single sheet of paper

Easy-to-Share Slide Show Videos with Music

Show your images to clients, friends, or family with more style and flair using elegant slide shows with music. Slide shows are a breeze to create, and you can share them easily by exporting them as videos, even in high definition

Flexible Online Publishing

Post your images to selected online photo-sharing services directly from within the Lightroom Library. Showcasing your work and keeping your web images fresh has never been simpler. Support for Flickr is already built in, and when friends or clients post comments on your Flickr galleries you can immediately see their feedback in the Lightroom Library alongside your images

Professionals: Boost Your Bottom Line

Lightroom is an invaluable assistant for professional photographers. You're juggling deadlines, processing and delivering proofs, soliciting client feedback, generating finished images, and marketing yourself and your work. Use Lightroom to do it all better and faster

More Time for Shooting and Marketing

Free up time so you can shoot more and expend more effort on promoting yourself and your photography. Lightroom is a fast, intuitive toolset that handles your whole post-shoot workflow in one application. Import, organize, review, and search your images quickly and easily. Adjust multiple photos from a shoot and generate proofs with efficient, timesaving batch operations. Distribute and showcase your images quickly using flexible print layouts, streamlined integration with online photo-sharing sites, easy web gallery creation, and more

Sophisticated Output Options

Take advantage of opportunities to effectively market your work with the comprehensive output options in Lightroom. Create sophisticated, customized print packages and elegant, easy-to-share slide show videos with music. Easily maintain a fresh, constantly updated web portfolio with flexible online publishing features that let you post images directly to your own web gallery or selected photo-sharing services from within the Lightroom Library

Easy Access to Assets to Build Your Brand

Never lose a potential sale. The superior image management, keywording, and searching features in Lightroom let you easily find and reuse any shot in your image library. Easily embed your name, logo, or other information in your images with the watermarking function. You can apply text or graphic watermarks to an image with adjustable size, position, and opacity, so your brand is reflected in your own style

Creativity and Flexibility

Nondestructive Environment

Set your creativity free in a nondestructive editing environment that encourages experimentation. Your original images are always safely unaltered, and it's easy to reverse your steps or save multiple versions of any photo

Superior Image Processing

Get the absolute best from your images with state-of-the-art image processing controls that work with RAW files from more than 290 camera models as well as JPEG, TIFF, and other file formats. Make precise overall adjustments or correct targeted areas. Dodge and burn, convert to black-and-white, add grain, reduce noise, adjust sharpness, create vignettes, and more

Selective Editing Brushes

Extend your creative control with a flexible brushes that let you adjust selected areas of your photo for just the look you want

Tracking of Editing Adjustments

Make multiple adjustments to an image while retaining complete freedom to undo your mistakes or try something different later. The History panel automatically tracks your changes with easy-to-understand text entries as you edit. Add set points in the panel at any time so you can instantly return to those versions of the photo

Before-and-After Comparison

Get a clearer sense of the effectiveness of your editing adjustments by viewing an original image side by side with a version of the photo that shows the effects of your edits as you make them

Tone and Color

Advanced Black-and-White Conversion

Gain powerful, subtle control over the tonal qualities that make or break black-and-white images. Familiar sliders let you precisely adjust the mixing of information from eight color channels when you convert to grayscale

Simplified Tone Curve Tools

Make quick, intuitive adjustments to the highlights, mid-tones, and shadows in your images with sliders or numeric entries. Or click on any region of the photo to directly adjust the part of the curve that corresponds to the tonal value of that region

Advanced Hue, Saturation, and Luminance Editing

Enhance color saturation and remove color casts with individual control over eight color channels each for hue, saturation, and luminance

Detail and Correction

Superior Noise Reduction

Achieve amazing, natural-looking results from your high ISO images with advanced noise reduction technology. You won't need more than what's built into Lightroom 5 to get the cleanest images at any ISO

Intelligent Sharpening

Make sharp, natural-looking images, regardless of whether they're intended for prints, slide shows, or your online web galleries. Intelligent sharpening lets you enhance detail without introducing harmful artifacts, and you can tailor your sharpening for different end uses

Red-Eye Removal

Instantly fix red eye in flash photos

Film Grain Simulation

Use the sliders to easily control the amount, size, and roughness of grain that you can add to your images to simulate the look of film

Lens Correction

Quickly and easily perfect your images by automatically reducing lens defects like geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting with single-click profiles. Even images from the best lenses will be improved

Perspective Correction

Get more natural-looking results by applying powerful, nondestructive perspective correction to your images. Reduce or eliminate the distortion that can occur, for example, when you take a photograph with the camera pointed upward, causing buildings to appear to be leaning backward in your image

Dust-Busting

Easily remove distracting spots and specks in your images with a single click

Saving Time and Working Efficiently

One Toolset for Your Photography Tasks

Get your digital photography essentials in one package that includes what you need to manage, perfect, and showcase all your images

Support for Video Files

Simplify your imaging work by managing video and still images in the same efficient application. Support for video files from most digital cameras lets you easily manage both still photos and video in the Lightroom Library

One-Click Adjustments for Multiple Images

Save time when processing images by applying the same Develop settings to all the photographs in a group at once using presets or the sync feature. For example, correct the exposure from an entire shoot or convert all of the images to black-and-white

Tight Photoshop Integration

Select one or multiple photos and then automatically open them in Adobe Photoshop software to perform detailed, pixel-level editing or to merge multiple photos into a panorama, a high dynamic range photo, or a creative composite. After making your edits in Photoshop, see the results immediately back in Lightroom

Let Lightroom track the changes you make to an image in the History panel, with as many remembered set points as you choose. Then switch between versions of the photo with a mouse click

Image Watermarking

Easily embed your identity or your brand and logo in your images with more options for customizing their look. The watermarking tool lets you apply text or graphic watermarks to a photo with adjustable size, position, and opacity

Intuitive Environment

Be more productive and efficient, and enjoy the freedom and creativity that comes from working with world-class tools perfectly designed for the job. The intuitive environment and controls of Lightroom are easy to master and let you quickly and smoothly accomplish your photography tasks

Accelerated Performance

Get your digital photography tasks done fast and have more time to shoot and promote your work. High-speed performance saves you valuable time from first look to final image

Tethered Shooting

Instantly import and view images as you shoot them with tethered capture, available for select cameras. Use it to make an immediate, highly detailed check of your shot, the lighting, or the shooting setup. Or get instant feedback from clients or subjects

Develop Presets

Save time by instantly applying favorite looks to images. When you've perfected a look that you particularly like for an image -- a high-contrast black-and-white effect or a supersaturated color look, for example -- you simply save the settings as a preset and apply it to your other photographs at any time. Many presets are included with Lightroom, and thousands more are available from the thriving worldwide community of Lightroom photographers and experts

Multiple Monitor Support

Gain even more speed and efficiency by using a second monitor to enlarge your workspace

Tools to Manage and Refine Many Images at Once

Automatically import, rename, group, and even process any number of images from cameras or camera memory cards as they're connected to your computer

Organizing and Managing

Extensive Image Management Tools

Take advantage of a powerful set of image management features to organize your photographs, flexibly rate and label them, and find them easily using a wide range of metadata tags and information

Multiple Viewing Options

See and evaluate your images quickly and clearly using the Grid view to browse large groups of photos, the Compare view to see selected images side by side, and the Loupe view to zoom in on the finest detail. Instantly switch between views with a single click

Fast Zooming

Check for critical sharpness and see small details by zooming in and out of any area of a photo with simple keyboard commands or a click of the mouse

Collections

Flexibly group photos according to the criteria or organizing logic that works best for the way you work and the subjects you shoot. It's as easy as selecting the photos and naming the collection. Recall collections with a single click, and easily modify their contents at any time

Offline Photo Management

Work with the photos in your Lightroom Library even when the actual image files are stored on media such as external hard drives or DVD discs that are not currently connected to your computer

DNG Conversion

Ensure the broadest compatibility and archival security of your proprietary RAW format image files by converting them to the universal DNG format. Convert files already in the Library at any time, or convert new images on import

Finding, Searching, and Sorting Images

File Renaming

Make your images easier to find and sort by creating a more logical and useful naming system than the default filenames provided by your camera. Then rename your photos individually, in batches, or automatically as they're imported from your camera, memory cards, or computer folders

Simple, Customized Keywording

Track your photos with the keywords that make sense to you -- just type and apply

Manual Photo Sorting

Freely sort your photos in whatever order you prefer by selecting any number of images in the Library -- contiguous or not -- and then dragging them to a new location in the grid. It's that simple

Single or Group Metadata Stamping

Add as much information to a photo as you like, either individually or to groups of selected images. Store metadata sets as presets and apply them to one photo or to hundreds with a single click

Advanced Search and Sort

Use a wide range of searching, sorting, and powerful metadata filtering criteria to quickly find just the photo you want, whether your library contains hundreds of images or tens of thousands

IPTC / EXIF / XMP Metadata Support

Make your photos easier to identify, track, find, and analyze. Lightroom accesses, preserves, and allows you to edit a comprehensive set of metadata entries, including standard IPTC, EXIF, and XMP data

Import or Export of Keywords Sets

Create a system for tracking and categorizing your images with keywords and then easily synchronize that system between different computers. Export your keyword sets to external files, and import new sets whenever needed. It's easy to transfer them from one computer or user to another

Importing and Exporting

Easy Image Importing

Save time with fast image importing. The import interface is easy to set up and navigate, with clear visual indications of where your photos will be located and how they'll be organized after you've imported them

Metadata Stamp on Import

Efficiently combine image management tasks by applying custom metadata or metadata presets to images as you import them

Add metadata stamps with your copyright, instructions for contacting you, or other information to every photo you print or send out

Printing

More Flexible Print Layout

Showcase your work in more creative formats using highly customizable print layouts, which you can save as reusable templates. With the custom print layout creation tool, you just drag one image or several shots onto a page and resize or reposition them as you like

Sharing

Flickr Integration

Use Lightroom seamlessly with Flickr by uploading your images directly to your account from within the Lightroom Library. When friends or clients post comments and ratings on your Flickr galleries, you can immediately see their feedback in the Lightroom Library alongside your images

One-Click Publishing to Your Website

Export your HTML or Adobe Flash Player compatible web galleries directly to the web in a single click. Just save your web server information as an FTP preset, and there's no need for a separate application

Easy-to-Share Slide Show Videos with Music

Show your images to clients, friends, or family with more style and flair using elegant slide shows with music. Slide shows are a breeze to create, and you can share them easily by exporting them as videos, even in high definition

Output Web Galleries to HTML or Flash

Easily present your photos in an HTML or Adobe Flash Player compatible web gallery, which you can preview before publishing. Save time by uploading your gallery directly from Lightroom and by using gallery templates -- a selection of elegant templates is already built into Lightroom, and you can create and save your own

Added in Lightroom 4

Highlight And Shadow Recovery

Now, enjoy the ability to bring out all the detail your camera captures in dark shadows and bright highlights. You'll have more power than ever to produce terrific images under even the toughest lighting conditions

Photo Book Creation

You can now create gorgeous photo books from your images using an array of intuitive templates included in Lightroom, then upload your book for printing with a few simple clicks!

Location-Based Photo Organization

Lightroom 5 provides the convenient ability to track down and group images by location, easily assign locations to images, or plot a photo journey. What's more you can automatically display this location data from GPS-enabled cameras and camera phones!

Extended Video Support

You can organize, view, and adjust / edit video clips. Also, play and trim clips, extract still photos from them, or adjust clips using the Quick Develop tool

White Balance Brush

Achieve more consistent color across images and scenes captured under mixed lighting sources. A versatile brush enables you to refine and adjust white balance in selected regions of your shot

Additional Editing Brushes

Increase your creative control by targeting specific parts of your images with local editing brushes for noise reduction, moiré removal, brightness, contrast, sharpness and more

Want to save time and ink while also helping to ensure that your prints meet your expectations? Well, of course you do! Thanks to soft proofing, you now have the ability to preview an image to see how it will look when printed using color-managed printers

Enhanced Online Sharing Integration

Enjoy posting images to more social media and photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr with ease. For select sites, online comments on your images are visible within Lightroom.

Emailing From Lightroom

You can send images via email directly from Lightroom, using the email account of your choice

Importing Libraries From Other Software

Now, you can bring the powerful, elegant qualities of Lightroom to all your pictures, both new and old. Import photos from other applications with ease

What's New in Lightroom 5?

Smart Previews

Easily work with images without bringing your entire library with you. Simply generate smaller stand-in files known as Smart Previews. Make adjustments or metadata additions to the Smart Previews and apply your changes to the full-size originals later

Advanced Healing Brush

Make your images spotless with a single brush stroke. Adjust the size of the brush and move it in precise paths. Unwanted objects and flaws--even those with irregular shapes--simply disappear

Upright

Straighten tilted images with a single click. The new Upright tool analyzes images, detecting skewed horizontal and vertical lines and even straightening shots where the horizon is hidden

Radial Gradient

Emphasize important parts of your image with greater flexibility and control. The Radial Gradient tool enables you to create off-center vignette effects or multiple vignetted areas within a single image

Video Slide Shows

Easily share your work in elegant video slide shows. Combine still images, video clips, and music in creative HD videos that can be viewed on almost any computer or device

Improved Photo Book Creation

Create beautiful photo books from your images. Lightroom includes a variety of easy-to-use book templates, and now you can edit them to create a customized look. Upload your book for printing with just a few clicks